Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi: Is Midrange AORUS Right For Your Next Build?

Packaging

The packaging for the Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi is standard fare with nothing jumping out at me as being different from what we have seen before. This is a good thing.

Accessories

The accessories for the Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro Wifi are simple and get the job done.

Manuals

AORUS Case Badge

M.2 Standoffs and mounting screws

Quick connect Front panel connector

RGB Extension Cables

Temp Sensor probes

WiFi/Bluetooth Antennae

SATA Cables (x4)

The Board

The Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro Wifi motherboard is simplistic which still driving home the design with the cuts in the fins fitting the overall design story of resembling claw marks from its namesake eagle. The board does not have any crazy OLED displays or other gadgets here which is not a bad thing but one omission I believe should not exist in 2019 is a 2 digit POST display. In my book, unless you simply have so many features cluttering the board you simply cannot fit a post display would be the only reason, but I have seen mITX boards with POST displays so, omitting it from this board makes absolutely no sense and makes diagnosing power-on issues much more of a hindrance than it needs to be.

A Closer Look

The Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi has 3 mechanical X16 length slots and two x1 slots. The bottom-most slot is an x4 electrically and fed by the PCH. The upper two metal shielded units are direct CPU attached lanes and they share lanes with the top being 16/8 while the second is 0/8.

The lower edge of the board’s connectivity is as follows. (Left to right)

Front Panel Audio Header

SPDIF header

Addressable LED Header

LED Jumper (switch between 12V & 5V)

5050 style Header

LED CT header (appears to be an LED demo mode control)

MCU Connector (Appears to be a possible debug or programming interface for LED MCU)

TPM Header

2x USB 2.0 headers

3x Sys fan headers

Front Panel header

4 way LED array for post sequence debug

The rear panel I/O has everything you could need for a full gaming rig with some to spare. (Left To Right)

The storage side of things we find 6x SATA ports right above the Thunderbolt header. To the right, you can see the USB 3.1 Gen 1 20 pin header along with between the DIMM slots and PCH sink you can see the USB 3.1 Gen 2 onboard header.

The previously mentioned audio solution you can see here. Gigabyte opted not to do any strange plastic shielding over this which gives you a full view of the audio hardware onboard. The WIMA caps really jump out at you with the matte red/pink hue.

The reinforced DIMM slots on the blacked out board simply works and makes for a very clean looking board and quite picturesque being you don’t have plastic covers protruding everywhere. 4 DIMM slots mean 64GB capacity and with the new DC modules, who knows maybe you could get 128GB on here but I have not had a chance to try those out to see if the memory controller could handle it.

Here we have the 8 + 4 pin EPS connectors used to feed +12V to the CPU VRM and well as I stated before even under heavily loaded situations a single 8 pin can easily do the job. Should you have an LN2 style load with this board the supplementary 4-pin will help but in all honesty for the 9900K even at maxed out load, it will be more than enough.

Let’s take a closer look at what makes the Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi tick.

Review Overview

Gigabytes midrange take on Z390 is here! Today we have for you the Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi. Gigabyte has long made motherboards for consumers and also pushed the limits for the overclocking/XOC community with a staff of well adept overclockers at their disposal. Gigabyte has made arguably some of the most top-tier boards in both the mainstream and HEDT platforms of varying success and design over the years. Gigabyte has really stepped up their game on the recent chipset generation from what I've seen with some very overbuilt power circuits but carrying with that note some questionable product positioning…

Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi: Is Midrange AORUS Right For Your Next Build?

Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi: Is Midrange AORUS Right For Your Next Build?

2018-11-19

Shannon Robb

Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi

Value - 9.8

Performance - 9.5

Innovation - 9

Quality - 9

93

9.3

Gigabyte comes into the sub $200 realm with guns blazing. Massive performance with a VRM to push it if you have the cooling to do so.